Service-learning courses provide students with practical opportunities to enhance their learning and development in the field, along with getting students engaged in different communities and settings. However, there are still many challenges to designing and offering effective service-learning courses, such as requiring all students to…

Community organizations must be self-sustaining in order to remain active, viable, and strong. The three primary steps involved in sustaining members, volunteers, and leaders include evaluate, recognize, and either retain, redirect, or disengage. A volunteer performance evaluation will determine whether individual and organizational goals are…

How can institutions and communities accelerate Latino student success? Examples of "Excelencia" is the only national effort to identify and promote evidence-based programs accelerating Latino student success in higher education. Since 2005, "Excelencia" in Education has recognized over 300 programs making a positive difference…

Funders, policymakers, and program leaders recognize the value of high-quality evidence. To make good use of a program evaluation, initiatives must contend with a set of fundamental questions first. Some of these are about the initiative itself: What outcomes does it seek to affect? Are daily activities in line with long-term goals? Others are…

In the 2013-14 school year, TASC entered the third year of its national demonstration of ExpandED Schools. Ten elementary and middle schools in New York City, Baltimore and New Orleans continued their partnerships with youth-serving community organizations, such as settlement houses or community development corporations. Together, principals,…

This article will focus on the potential role for youth evaluation advisory groups within youth grant-making organizations and networks. The main elements to be discussed include the formation of the network, the training program elements, some specific examples of efforts by young people to create and strengthen evaluation within their YACs…

This report serves as a legacy document for the Ford Foundation's More and Better Learning Time (MBLT) initiative. It summarizes the approaches to and outcomes and challenges of successful MBLT strategies around the country. The report includes data from a survey for Ford Foundation MBLT grantees across the country and from case studies in Denver,…

Life in the Community is an action research project with three objectives: (1) To work with four organisations from the third sector to improve the daytime opportunities for up to 40 people with higher support needs and help them to be more included in the life of a community; (2) To develop the capacity of organisations in the not-for-profit…

A task force was set up to develop a system of evaluating community-based, nonprofit organizations that were members of the Rockford, Illinois, United Way. The task force experimented with participatory evaluation, which resulted in an action plan for the groups. (JOW)

The Exploratorium is home to XTech, a science education program which began in 2006 and was primarily funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant (Award # 05-25217) through its ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) initiative. XTech provided project-based afterschool activities in science, engineering,…

This report presents the findings and conclusions from the first phase of a two-phase study of education and work councils (community organizations of business leaders, school officials, and representatives of other institutions, formed to ease the transition of youths from school to work). The report describes the education and work councils…

Community organizing for school reform is a growing national phenomenon, as young people, parents, neighborhood residents, and faith-based institutions struggle to improve the quality and equity of public schooling, particularly in urban school districts. Now a decade old, community organizing projects are influencing local public schools in…

This article examines the nuances of conducting evaluation of and in nonformal education programs and settings. The author examines a set of universal evaluation issues--evaluator role, stakeholder involvement, program theory, capacity building, strategy selection, and evaluation use--as they occur and interact within nonformal education…

This guide is designed for persons who need to plan education programs in world affairs for presentation to an organization. Such a person might be a program chair of a local League of Women Voters or a community Rotary Club. The guide is organized in five sections, each of which presents information on one of five steps to program planning. The…

Community foundations can be effective vehicles for channeling support to low income neighborhood organizations. This document comprises a guide for community foundations to help them develop their grantmaking and programming skills and to connect with other elements of community leadership. Chapter 1, "Why Support Low Income Neighborhood…